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In this March 13, 2007 file photo, Stephen Hawking speaks at Zellerbach Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campusin Berkeley, California. Hawking delivered the annual J. Robert Oppenheimer Lecture in Physics to a sold out crowd.

Professor Stephen Hawking, the former professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge and author of best-selling "A Brief History of Time," said Sunday during a summit in China that the human species had 600 years to survive on planet Earth, NBC News reported.

Hawking has publicly expressed additional fears about the future of artificial intelligence (AI), the need for a new Space Age and the serious realities of global warming in the past.

Hawking said the hypothetical day when humans will supposedly have to leave Earth has been likened to a “Doomsday,” NBC News reported.

Hawking has also helped to launch the Breakthrough Initiatives, a series of projects seeking to probe “the big questions of life in the Universe,” including finding and communicating with extraterrestrial life.